Keyword cannibalization
-
Hi,
I have two questions regarding keyword cannibalization.
1. I am doing the SEO for a website that sells do-it-yourself packages for heating, bathrooms, ventilation and so on for new houses or for renovations.
The most important pages are the product pages (e.g. example.com/products/bathrooms) but there is also a blog divided into categories per product (e.g. example.com/category/bathrooms). The difference is clear: the product page focuses on the product itself, and the blog category page contains all blog posts relating bathrooms (tips, new materials, new innovations,...).
My question is if the product page and blog category page can compete with each other for the term bathrooms (although they have different content). Does it help or is it enough to direct internal links from separate blog posts to the most important page (being the product page) and back to avoid my category blog page to compete with my product page?
Another possibility would be to use a canonical tag on the category page pointing to the product page, but this actually isn't good practice because it isn't really duplicate content.
Third possibility would be to no index the category page. So what is the best solution of the three?
2. A second example of keyword cannibalization can be category archive pages for webshops. If you have a category page example.com/jeans and a subcategory page example.com/jeans/women, is it useful to optimize on both pages for different terms, being jeans for the first page and jeans for women for the second, or will Google not make this distinction because the keyword are too closely related?
In other words, is it useful to write content specifically for jeans for women and make a landing page for this keyword, or will this page compete with the category page that has been optimized for just the keyword jeans?
In large clothing webshops, you can see for example that there is an optimized page for Nike (content, headings,...) but not for Nike for women or Nike for men. Is this just laziness or is this done exactly to avoid keyword cannibalization?
Looking forward to your comments!
-
Hi,
Thanks for the answer and sorry for the late response.
I understand what you mean, but I still have the following question: there is no possibility to add extra content to the blog category pages, unless through source code. This means I can not add extra text on these pages, so these blog category pages just sum up all the different blog articles of which the titles are H2's. Will these pages ever rank, because it is not really unique content about one subject?
Thanks!
-
I am a Cannibal.
For an important keyword, two pages of substantive, useful and valuable content is better than one. Both of them will often appear within the SERPs and each of them can be optimized for different keyword variants and different searcher intents. Develop ways to link these pages to one another in ways that are obvious and usefully presented to the visitor.
All of this substantive, useful and valuable content can show visitors that you are The Man for this product or this product category.
Sometimes I have numerous pages of substantive, useful and valuable content for one keyword. Sales page, how to use it page, parts and accessories page, maintenance and repair page, comparison of product variants page. All of these link to each other. Where competition is moderate to low I can have two or more pages on the first SERP.
There is nothing wrong about being a cannibal if you do it with substantive, useful and valuable content.
Are you trying to run your competitor out of town or are you farting around?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Search engine keyword rank - easiest way to check the keywords that rank across website
What is the best keyword ranking tool you have used? I have used various tools by which I am expected to identify and input the keyword I want to track... However, recently I was introduced to Searchmetrics, which I think automatically pulls in the keywords a website ranks for, without the need for manual input from the SEO (I haven't used this tool yet, so apologies if I am incorrect!). Do any other rank trackers work like this? Thanks, Luke
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart1 -
Is this keyword easy to rank? how can I estimate what kind of work it takes.
I am Using Micro Niche Finder KeyWord: Send SMS online domain available: .org Avg. Monthly searches: 1600 Adword cost : 2.12 Measure of Back link: 633 SOC: 20 (green) Most of the Back link using Majestic SEO appear to be coming from sendhub.com and massmailsoftware.com website. I researched sites with these keywords and those sites appear to have tiered pricing plans and appear to be charging money for their services. My plan, put some effort in organic SEO and rank this site to page 1. Get some optin users and start communicating with them to see what is their pain point. How can I tell on what it takes to rank this page to page 1 on google? Would it take lot of blog articles for back link and if so… how many? Is a rough estimate possible. Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | zsyed0 -
Google’s Hummingbird and Keyword Cannibalization
My client wants to have keywords added on every product with the product name , apparently some seo guru told him that hummingbird is all about key phrases and long tail keywords. As i know hummingbird lends to understand the intent and contextual meaning of the query. The issue is if I add the keywords on for e.g oak furniture on all of my product title,And we are using zen-cart platform and it will change the internal anchor text on the product listing page. It will cause a Cannibalization issue. Question1. I just need help to reply to client that adding keyword can cause detrimental to ranking. Question 2. If i am wrong then do we need to re optimise the site. I have read http://moz.com/blog/how-to-solve-keyword-cannibalization Many thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Adnan.Hassan.Khan0 -
Page URL keywords
Hello everybody, I've read that it's important to put your keywords at the front of your page title, meta tag etc, but my question is about the page url. Say my target keywords are exotic, soap, natural, and organic. Will placing the keywords further behind the URL address affect the SEO ranking? If that's the case what's the first n number of words Google considers? For example, www.splendidshop.com/gift-set-organic-soap vs www.splendidshop.com/organic-soap-gift-set Will the first be any less effective than the second one simply because the keywords are placed behind?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ReferralCandy0 -
How do you decide which keywords to optimize first?
Let me be very clear, I am not looking for info on how to rank keywords so please do not post about that. I have a list of keywords I chose and want to rank for, and every group of keywords are related. I was wondering, what is a good strategy for determining which keywords to start with? Should I take one keyword from each group so it looks more natural? Should I do a group of 10 related keywords at a time? Any ideas? Links? Tips? Resources? What have you done in the past?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jhinchcliffe0 -
Worth removing keywords...?
I was just going over a site I manage and noticed it had a load of meta keywords on it. Probably 10-15 keywords per page... Do you think this is harming the site? Is it worth removing them?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnW-UK0 -
Linking to local pages on main page - keyword self-cannibalization issue?
Hi guys, Our website has this landing page: www.example.com/service1/ Is this considered keyword self-cannibalization if on the above page we link to local pages such as: www.example.com/service1-in-chicago/ www.example.com/service1-in-newyork/ www.example.com/service1-in-texas/ Many thanks David
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sssrpm0 -
Are there diminishing returns of keyword stuffing domain names?
Aside from the obvious usability issue of having a super long domain name. Let's just for a moment image that that doesn't matter at all. Is there a point at which having another keyword in your domain name is not giving a significant boost to SER? Lets be more specific. Often we see two keyword domains, and they rank well. and I have also seen many 3 keyword domains raking well. but what about a 4, 5 or 6 keyword domain name? like: keyword1keyword2keyword3keyword4keyword4keyword6.com <-- obviously it looks ridiculous, but we are ignoring that factor for the duration of this question. I would also like to know in multiple keyword domain names, does the location of the keywords have any relevance? is it like title tags? closer to the front = more boost? And furthermore one last question on the same subject. Does google consider varations of words when it gives the boost to "exact match" domain name in search results. for example: BookStory.com V.S. BookStories.com when someone searches for "story books" would these two get the same bonus?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adriandg0